A MENINA DO RIO
Interactive multimedia installation
By Maíra Ortins

April 5 – May 4, 2025
Opening: April 5, 2025 at 15h00
Várzea de Calde Linen Museum (Viseu)

A production by Binaural Nodar, in partnership with the municipality of Viseu (Viseu Cultura) and the Calde Parish Council, with institutional support from the Department of Communication and Art at the University of Aveiro and also part of the cultural programming activities of the Tramontana project, co-financed by the Creative Europe Program.

The interactive multimedia installation A Menina do Rio (The Girl from the River) (2024) is based on an analogy of recollection, built on affective memories in domestic environments. The work is based on the memories of the artist’s maternal grandmother, who, through her interpersonal relationships, reinvented her own history. The absence of a male provider and female financial autonomy emerge as central layers of the installation, enhanced by technological devices that promote interaction and reinforce its context. In A Menina do Rio, the old songs and fragmented accounts of daily life connected to the river help construct identities that evoke the feminine and refer to a melancholic past. In this way, the action embodied in artistic making enables the reconfiguration of affective memories through the imagination, allowing the past to be resignified in the present.

This installation relates symbolically to the village of Várzea de Calde, namely through the presence of materials such as linen and the memories of riverside landscapes.

Materials of the work:

Interactive sewing machine, two-dimensional works in manufactured linen, photography, thimble, lace, drawing on linen.
Maíra Ortins is a multidisciplinary artist born in the city of Recife in 1980. She moved to Ceará and has a degree in Literature from the UFC (2006) and is currently studying for her Masters in Contemporary Artistic Creation at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. She has participated in several group and solo exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. Her work is included in important collections in Brazilian museums and in public institutions abroad.

Awards:
2024/ John Goto International Prize, ESMAD. PORTO, Portugal
2020/ Acquisition prize – Secult Ce, Fortaleza, Brazil
2018/69º April Salon – Fortaleza, Brazil
2009/ Drawing Prize, Unifor Plástica, Fortaleza, Brazil